Billboards inform Puget Sound citizens of Nuclear Weapons stockpiled in their Back Yard

Beginning on July 21, and continuing for four weeks, five billboards will display the following paid advertisement: Did You Know, You are only *** Miles from a Big Pile of Nuclear Bombs!  Let’s Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

Included in the five advertisements are maps showing the proximity of the cities and billboards in Lynnwood, Shoreline, Kirkland, Gorst, and Seattle—to Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, homeport for 8 of the Navy’s 14 Trident nuclear-powered submarines.  

The billboards serve as a public service announcement—informing the reader of the exact number of miles they are at that exact location, to nuclear weapons based at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor.  The naval base is the largest concentration of deployed nuclear weapons in the world.  Below is the Lynnwood, Washington billboard.

Pat Moriarity, the artist commissioned by Ground Zero to produce the billboards stated, "I have lived in Kitsap County for 25 years and have always been aware of the Bangor submarine base. That said, until recently I never really understood the true extent of just how many “ready to go” nuclear weapons were stockpiled so close to all our homes. I'd like to think if everyone knew, they’d also be concerned about getting rid of them. As a species we humans need to evolve past this ‘mutual assured destruction’ mentality, the scariest staring contest you can imagine.”

The cartoon style billboards by Pat Moriarity are the third of a series of cartoon billboards that show the proximity of communities across Washington State to Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor.

Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor is homeport to the largest concentration of deployed nuclear warheads in the world.  The nuclear warheads are deployed on Trident D-5 missiles on SSBN submarines and are stored in an underground nuclear weapons storage facility on the base.

There are eight Trident SSBN submarines deployed at Bangor.  Six Trident SSBN submarines are deployed on the East Coast at Kings Bay, Georgia.  

One Trident submarine carries the destructive force of over 1,000 Hiroshima bombs (the Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons).

 

Each Trident submarine was originally equipped for 24 Trident missiles.  In 2015-2017 four missile tubes were deactivated on each submarine as a result of the New START Treaty.  Currently, each Trident submarine deploys with 20 D-5 missiles and about 90 nuclear warheads (an average of 4-5 warheads per missile).  The warheads are either the W76-1 90-kiloton warheads, W88 455-kiloton warheads, or W-76-2 8-kiloton warheads.

The Navy in early 2020 started deploying the new W76-2 low-yield warhead (approximately eight kilotons) on select ballistic submarine missiles at Bangor (following initial deployment in the Atlantic in December 2019).  The warhead was deployed to deter Russian first use of tactical nuclear weapons, dangerously creating a lower threshold for the use of U.S. strategic nuclear weapons.

Comic Book artist Pat Moriarity, who created the cartoon style billboard near his home in Port Orchard, is an award-winning internationally known artist.  

Hans M. Kristensen is the expert source for the statement, “Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor… with largest concentration of deployed nuclear weapons in the world.”  (See cited source material here and here.)  Mr. Kristensen is director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists where he provides the public with analysis and background information about the status of nuclear forces and the role of nuclear weapons.

The billboards are an effort by Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, a grass roots organization in Poulsbo, Washington, to reawaken public awareness of the dangers of nuclear weapons in the Puget Sound region.

The billboard ads

The five billboard ads measure 10 ft. 6 in. tall by 22 ft. 9 in. in length and will be displayed for one month starting on July 21. The billboards—third of a series of billboards by Pat Moriarity--are located approximately at: 

* 14005 Highway 99 Lynnwood WA https://www.google.com/maps/search/47.87130374,+-122.27484673?sa=X&ved=1t:242&ictx=111 

* 13504 NE 124^th St., Kirkland, WA https://www.google.com/maps/search/47.711658,+-122.159571?sa=X&ved=1t:242&ictx=111 

* Roosevelt Way NE and NE 45^th St. (southeast corner), Seattle, WA https://www.google.com/maps/search/47.661145,+-122.317192?sa=X&ved=1t:242&ictx=111

* N 165^th St and Aurora Ave. N (northwest corner), Shoreline, WA https://www.google.com/maps/search/47.748895,+-122.345896?sa=X&ved=1t:242&ictx=111 

* Highway 16, east of Feigley Rd. W, Gorst, WA https://www.google.com/maps/search/47.52478,+-122.69835?sa=X&ved=1t:242&ictx=111 

Our proximity to the largest number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons puts us near a dangerous local and international threat.  When citizens become aware of their role in the prospect of nuclear war, or the risk of a nuclear accident, the issue is no longer an abstraction.  Our proximity to Bangor demands a deeper response.

Nuclear weapons and resistance

In the 1970s and 1980s, thousands demonstrated against nuclear weapons at the Bangor base and hundreds were arrested.  Seattle Archbishop Hunthausen had proclaimed the Bangor submarine base the “Auschwitz of Puget Sound” and in 1982 began to withhold half of his federal taxes in protest of “our nation's continuing involvement in the race for nuclear arms supremacy.''

On May 27, 2016, President Obama spoke in Hiroshima and called for an end to nuclear weapons.   He said that the nuclear powers “…must have the courage to escape the logic of fear, and pursue a world without them.”  Obama added, “We must change our mindset about war itself.” 

Contacts for more information:

Glen Milner (206) 365-7865

Rodney Brunelle (425) 485-7030

Pat Moriarity, artist, cartoondepot@earthlink.net

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The Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action was founded in 1977.  The center is on 3.8 acres adjoining the Trident submarine base at Bangor, Washington.  The Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action offers the opportunity to explore the roots of violence and injustice in our world and to experience the transforming power of love through nonviolent direct action. We resist all nuclear weapons, especially the Trident ballistic missile system.

Eighty Years After Trinity, the Horror of the Atomic Bomb Lives On

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: I have written countless essays over the years about the infamous Trinity Test that took place eighty years ago. Trinity was the start of a long journey that has taken Humanity down the perilous road of preparation for its own destruction. Eighty years later, and after decades of my own work to abolish nuclear weapons, I am beginning to wonder if we have a death wish. It is not a question of whether or not we will one day experience a civilization-ending nuclear war, but WHEN! So long as nuclear weapons exist, it is a matter of probability that they will be used, ether accidentally or intentionally. It is quite simply a suicidal game of Russian Roulette. 

Ray Acheson is a brilliant and tireless activist.  Ray is Director of Reaching Critical Will, Women's International League for Peace Freedom’s (WILPF) disarmament programme. They are author of Abolishing State Violence: A World Beyond Bombs, Borders, and Cages and Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy. They organise for abolition, disarmament, and demilitarisation in their work with various coalitions and provide intersectional femi  nist analysis and advocacy at international disarmament forums.

Ray originally published the following essay at the Women's International League for Peace & Freedom.

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16 July 2025 marks 80 years since the detonation of the first nuclear weapon. Its legacy is that of death and destruction, with the burdens being felt disproportionately by Indigenous Peoples around the world. Eighty years on, nuclear abolition is imperative for justice and peace.

By Ray Acheson

16 July 2025

On 16 July 1945, the United States detonated the first nuclear weapon on the lands of the Tularosa Basin in New Mexico. The bomb, nicknamed “Gadget,” was made of plutonium. The so-called Trinity Test was conducted at White Sands, a beautiful desert about 120 miles south of Alburquerque, on colonised lands of First Nations Peoples.  

While the US government claimed the lands were “empty,” dire consequences were borne by local Indigenous communities, uranium mining workers, and others living near the test site. The lingering effects of the radioactive fallout extended beyond the immediate vicinity of the bombings, affecting generations to come and leaving a lasting scar on the environment and the lives of those residing in the surrounding regions. 

The Trinity Test spread radiation across all contiguous US states as well as Canada and Mexico. Recent scientific models show significant radioactive contamination in dozens of First Nations communities over the first few days following the explosion. 

The test was followed only weeks later by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, resulting in hundreds of thousands of immediate deaths and the suffering of many more from radioactive poisoning. 

Legacy of harm 

None of this is historical. The impacts of the Trinity Test are still being felt today, and the nuclear arms race it generated is accelerating. 

Since 1945, more than 2000 nuclear “tests” have been conducted worldwide by nine nuclear-armed states, causing widespread cancers and other health tragedies, environmental contamination, and displacement. 

The nine nuclear-armed states are modernising their nuclear arsenals, spending more than 100 billion dollars a year. In the midst of rising threats to use nuclear weapons and military confrontation among nuclear-armed states, the use of nuclear weapons is a horrifyingly real prospect. 

  
The Manhattan Project today 

It all began with the top-secret Manhattan Project. As the Nuclear Truth Project notes, this was a project of “unprecedented scope, initiated and sustained with private and corporate partners.”  

The Manhattan Project got its name because New York City was a key node in the development of the atomic bomb. The US Army Manhattan Engineer District managed the project early on, drawing on a research programme located at Columbia University, and collaborated with private companies at 30 sites throughout the city. 

The bombs used in New Mexico, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki were built at what today is called the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Other sites around the world are also implicated in the bomb’s development—including uranium mines in so-called Canada and Democratic Republic of the Congo, a uranium enrichment and processing site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and a plutonium production facility in Hanford, Washington. 

Oak Ridge is still operating today, even after three peace activists broke into the lab in 2013 in an act of civil disobedience to draw attention to the horrors produced at the site. Hanford is closed, but continues to leak radioactive poison into the land and water around it, lending to its distinction as “the most toxic place in America.” 

Today, Los Alamos continues to function as one of the key nuclear weapon labs in the US. Its operations are expanding to build new “plutonium pits”—the cores of nuclear bombs. This has resulted in new construction at the facility, which has already run into delays and ever increasing costs. 

In June 2025, the US government requested a 29 per cent increase in the budget for nuclear warhead development and production—which would be the largest increase since 1962. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the US nuclear arsenal will cost about a trillion dollars over the next decade. Meanwhile, the government has slashed social programmes related to health care, education, food security, and more. 

Actions for nuclear abolition 

Eighty years after the Trinity Test, the only effective way to address the test’s poisonous legacy and current harms is to abolish nuclear weapons. There are actions everyone can take, including: 

• Demand reparations by all nuclear-armed states to all people impacted by nuclear weapon tests, bomb development, uranium mining, and radioactive waste; 
• Demand governments ensure that aboveground nuclear weapon testing is never resumed, end other forms of nuclear weapon testing, abolish uranium mining and nuclear weapon production, and not impose nuclear waste dumps on Indigenous Peoples; 
• Call on nuclear-armed states to immediately cease their nuclear weapon modernisation programmes and redirect that money towards nuclear disarmament, decommissioning and clean-up of nuclear sites, and a just transition for workers to socially and ecologically safe industries; 
• Call on your government to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which prohibits all nuclear testing as well as the development, possession, and use of nuclear weapons, and all other related activities; 
• Urge your local city or town council to join the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN)’s Cities Appeal in support of the TPNW; Ask your parliamentarians, senators, or congressional representatives to sign the ICAN Parliamentary Pledge and work for nuclear disarmament; 
• Get involved in ICAN’s Don’t Bank on the Bomb initiative to remove your money from nuclear weapons and compel your bank, pension fund, or financial institution to stop funding nuclear weapon production; and Find out if the universities in your area are helping to build nuclear weapons and campaign to end those contracts. 

Resources for more information 

Time Zero podcast 

Nuclear Truth Project 

Trinity Nuclear Test’s Fallout Reached 46 States, Canada, and Mexico, Study Shows 

Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America 

The Prophets of Oak Ridge 

ICAN’s Interactive Tool on Nuclear Weapon Test Impacts

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END NOTE: Original source URL for Ray's essay: https://www.wilpf.org/eighty-years-after-trinity-the-horror-of-the-atomic-bomb-lives-on/

IPPNW Calls for an Immediate Ceasefire and Return to Diplomacy with Iran

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) has just issued a most important statement calling for an immediate ceasefire and return to diplomacy with Iran. We must understand that if this conflict escalates beyond a certain (and unknown) threshold, it is almost certain to draw the U.S. and Russia (the two major nuclear powers) into the conflict, significantly raising the stakes and vastly increasing the risk of a global nuclear war. This is a risk that Humanity cannot afford to take. Everyone must speak out, demanding an end to Israel's current conduct and the charting of a diplomatic course to a peaceful resolution of this conflict.

Statement issued JUNE 13, 2025

The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) condemns Israel’s military strikes on Iran and calls for an immediate ceasefire to prevent further escalation and the loss of civilian life.

Iran is not currently assessed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) or the US government to have an active nuclear weapons program. This attack by a nuclear-armed state undermines ongoing US-led diplomatic efforts to restore non-proliferation efforts in the region.

IPPNW urges Iran to fully comply with its obligations under the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and IAEA safeguards, and to re-engage in negotiations with the United States at the earliest possible date. Israel, the region’s only nuclear-armed state, must support these efforts and take concrete steps toward disarmament, notably by participating in the establishment of a Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction Free Zone. We urge Iran, Israel, and all UN Member States to join the nearly 100 states that have already signed on to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

The declared nuclear weapons states – the US, Russia, China, France, and the UK – bear substantial responsibility for the progressive weakening of the global non-proliferation regime.  Not only have they failed to honor their disarmament obligations under the NPT, but they are also going further by making massive investments in new nuclear weapons and capabilities. The US decision under the first Trump administration to withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) is another major contributing failure that has led to this latest regional and global crisis.  

The humanitarian and environmental consequences of any use of nuclear weapons would be catastrophic. A single nuclear detonation over any major city would cause mass casualties and overwhelm health systems; a nuclear war of any size would trigger global climate disruption and a famine that could affect billions. Humanity is already closer to nuclear war than at any point since the Cold War. We cannot survive the addition of another nuclear-armed state.

There is no military solution to the growing risk of nuclear proliferation. Indeed, war and armed violence further incentivizes states to seek nuclear weapons. The only reliable path to security is through diplomacy and the irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons.

CLICK HERE to read the full statement at the IPPNW website.

END NOTE: IPPNW was founded in 1980 with the "goal of creating a more peaceful and secure world freed from the threat of nuclear annihilation", and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for its efforts.

TAKE ACTION: You can take action by calling on your members of Congress to embrace the War Powers Act and stop any U.S. support for Israel's strikes on Iran.

“Do not let the nuclear armed states lead us down the path to death.”

EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION: Dr. Ira Helfand delivered a compelling statement on behalf of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) at the Third Preparatory Committee for the 2026 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, 30 April 2025. He concluded the statement with a call to action: "The world is at a crossroads.  We have before us the choice of life or death.  Do not let the nuclear armed states lead us down the path to death." 

Having worked in emergency medicine, Dr. Helfand knows that there will not be enough - if any at all - emergency rooms, let alone burn unit beds, should even a "limited" nuclear war break out. The (initial) survivors will be on their own, and they will envy the dead! It is not a matter of if, but when, humanity suffers what will be the final war, so long as countries continue to brandish nuclear weapons. The U.S. is building up its nuclear arsenal once again, setting the (wrong) example for other countries, rather than leading the way to a world without the threat of nuclear war. 

Will we choose life... or death???

This statement was originally published on April 30, 2025 at the IPPNW Peace & Health Blog. Dr. Helfand is an IPPNW Board Member.

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Distinguished delegates, esteemed colleagues, and honored guests,

Dr. Ira Helfand delivering IPPNW’s statement to the 2025 NPT Preparatory Committee

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. I am not a diplomat. I am an Emergency Room doctor who has spent the last 50 years speaking with patients and their families. So let me talk to you now as I would to the family of a critically ill patient.

Because that is the situation we face. The world, for which we are collectively responsible, is in terrible danger. Nine countries, five of them parties to this Treaty, have chosen to build arsenals of nuclear weapons that effectively hold all of humanity, including their own citizens, hostage. They want these weapons because they make them strong and allow them to bully the rest of the world. They justify these weapons with the illusion that they offer security. That is a dangerous lie. These weapons are the greatest threat to our survival and pose an existential threat to civilization.

Like the chronic smoker who lives in denial about the risk of developing lung cancer, we have largely convinced ourselves that nuclear war will never happen. The truth is, we are closer to a nuclear war today than we have ever been and, yet, we go about our daily life as though this sword of Damocles were not hanging over us.

Studies show that a large-scale nuclear war between the United States and Russia, who together possess nearly 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons, would end life as we know it. Most of this city, including this very building we are sitting in, would be vaporized and 12 to 15 million people would simply disappear. Across both countries, an estimated 200-300 million people would be killed in the first half hour. Survivors would be left in a radioactive waste field with no electric grid, no internet, no cell phones, no health care, no food distribution system, no banking system, and no system for maintaining law and order. In the following months, most of those who initially survived would die—from radiation poisoning, epidemic disease, exposure, and starvation.  

But this is only part of the story. The impacts of this war would ripple far beyond the borders of the US and Russia. The enormous fires that consumed the cities of Russia and America would loft millions of tons of soot into the upper atmosphere, blocking out the sun and causing global temperatures to plummet by an average of 10 degrees C. In the interior regions of North America and Eurasia temperatures would drop 25 to 30 degrees C. We have not seen temperatures that cold since the last Ice Age. 

Under these conditions, ecosystems that have evolved since the end of that Ice Age will collapse; food production will stop and, according to a landmark study published in 2022, 6 billion people, three quarters of humanity, will starve in the first two years. The study stopped at 2 years. The famine would not, and we do not know what the ultimate death toll will be. That same study showed that a much smaller-scale war, such as one between India and Pakistan, will cause enough climate disruption to trigger a famine that will kill a quarter of humanity—2 billion people globally in the first 2 years.

The nuclear powers assure us that this will never happen — that deterrence will prevent nuclear weapons from ever being used. They push this myth even as they threaten to use these very weapons.

But the truth is that nuclear weapons do not possess some magical power that guarantees they will never be used. In fact, there have been numerous incidents throughout the nuclear weapons era when we have come within minutes of the holocaust I have just described. We have not survived because deterrence works, because our leaders have been all wise, our military policies and doctrines sound and our technology perfect. We have survived, to use the words of former US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, because, “We lucked out…It was luck that prevented nuclear war.”

Five of the nine nuclear powers have a binding obligation under Article VI of this Treaty to engage in good faith negotiations for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Yet they have ignored this obligation for nearly 6 decades. The US and Russia have actually gone further by abandoning every nuclear arms control agreement except for New START, and that will expire next February. These failures, taken together with the destabilizing and deadly wars in Ukraine and Gaza, are causing some non-nuclear parties to the NPT to seek access to nuclear weapons. 

When 121 non nuclear nations came together to uphold Article VI and negotiated the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), the nuclear armed states chose not to join that historic effort but to boycott the negotiations and do everything they could to undermine the new Treaty using the bizarre claim, straight out of 1984’s Ministry of Truth, that the TPNW “undermined” the NPT. This review conference needs to call out their horrific failure to honor their Article VI obligations. The N-9 should address any concerns with the TPNW by meaningfully engaging with States Parties and joining the Treaty’s official proceedings. 

They must come together, agree to a detailed timetable to eliminate their nuclear arsenals, adhere to the TPNW’s provisions, and join the Treaty at the earliest possible date. 

The world is at a crossroads.  We have before us the choice of life or death.  Do not let the nuclear armed states lead us down the path to death.

After 78 years, can we put the nuclear genie back in the lamp?

By Leonard Eiger

July 16th marks the day 78 years ago when the United States let the nuclear genie out of the lamp.

On July 16, 1945, at 5:29:45 AM at the Alamogordo Test Range, on the Jornada del Muerto (Journey of Death) desert, in the test named Trinity, Manhatten Project scientists detonated the experimental device known as the "Gadget,” creating a light "brighter than a thousand suns." A mere 6 kilogram (13.2 pound) sphere of plutonium, compressed to supercriticality by the surrounding high explosives, created an explosion equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT (20 Kilotons).

Was this, as thought nuclear physicist Julius Robert Oppenheimer, the beginning of the end? Oppenheimer headed up the Manhattan Project's weapons laboratory at Los Alamos during World War II, and is often credited as the “father of the atomic bomb.”

In a 1965 television interview, Oppenheimer said of the moments following the Trinity test: "We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another."

These scientists had certainly "become death", and they had created what could become (quite literally) "the destroyer of worlds," or what could at least destroy most life on Earth. The nuclear genie was out of the lamp, and now, 78 years later, we may have only one final wish left. What should it be?     

Less than one month after the Trinity test, the United States dropped two atomic bombs - on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - that killing roughly 110,000 people immediately or shortly after the blast. As many as 220,000 were dead by the end of 1945. Even today survivors and subsequent generations suffer the effects of radiation.

The official U.S. government story was that the two atomic bombings were necessary to end the war and prevent up to a million U.S. soldiers' lives should the U.S. invade Japan. Yet, some military and civilian officials have said publicly that the bombings were not necessary to end the war. Even the infamous General Curtis LeMay said, “...The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”

What is rarely mentioned about why the U.S. decided to use the bomb (aside from the blatant racism that must have underscored the decision) is that the U.S. intended to intimidate and contain the Soviet Union. Whatever the real reasons, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin “certainly saw U.S. possession of the atomic bomb as a direct threat to the Soviet Union and its place in the post-war world—and he was determined to level the playing field.” And before the radioactive dust had settled the nuclear arms race between the U.S. and Soviet Union was underway.

What is also mostly unknown are the effects on generations of people all over the world from the production of nuclear weapons (by the U.S. and other nuclear nations) - including the mining and processing of uranium, production of the weapons, nuclear testing, and mismanagement of nuclear waste. Generations of human beings have quite literally acted (without their knowledge or consent) as subjects of a grotesque experiment.

So began a journey that has led humanity down the perilous road of continuing preparation for its own destruction. Scientists, continuing the legacy of the Manhattan Project scientists, have continued to seek the power of gods, creating ever more destructive thermonuclear devices over the years; and many in government, industry, and think tanks continue asking for more of these horrific weapons (and their delivery systems).

The U.S. government is currently working to replace its nuclear triad – bombers, land-based s missiles, and ballistic missile submarines, and new thermonuclear warheads will certainly be close behind. The replacement for the OHIO Class “Trident” ballistic missile submarines is currently in production and the Navy hopes to have the first replacement delivered by 2027. The government has already built new bomb-making facilities at Kansas City and Oak Ridge, and is working to upgrade its other nuclear weapons facilities.

The U.S. is so busy boosting its massive nuclear weapons program that it is no wonder it does not support the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. It has paid lip service to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and has pulled out of both the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty (President George W. Bush) and Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty (President Donald Trump). To top it all off, in early 2023 Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia was “suspending its participation” in New START, the last remaining nuclear weapons treaty between the U.S. and Russia. Does this sound bleak?

Each successive U.S. president, including Joe Biden, has forged ahead towards nuclear darkness, and it is up to the people to call for an end to this madness that consumes vast quantities of economic capital while preparing for the end of life as we know it; it serves no useful purpose to national security or to humanity.

We, as citizens of the U.S. and as global citizens, can participate on many levels, from advocacy to nonviolent direct action; from our hands to our feet - there is something everyone can do to help to try and put the nuclear genie back in the bottle. It is no simple task, and many people would say that we are naive to think such a thing is possible. Yet, we will never know if we don't try.

Even the U.S. Conference of Mayors has, in many recent years, called on the United States to act now to both prevent nuclear war and eliminate nuclear weapons. This year's resolution by the Conference of Mayors is the first to support specific legislation - House Resolution 77, ‘Embracing the Goals and Provisions of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons’.”

Mayors understand that even a single thermonuclear weapon would cause devastation, death and suffering far beyond imagination. The survivors would envy those who were incinerated in the time it takes to snap one's finger, and their cities would be rendered uninhabitable for generations. Now try to imagine the results of a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia!

Of course, the U.S. government has known since the early days of the Cold War that a nuclear war would cause the loss of millions of U.S. lives and utter devastation of the nation's infrastructure, and yet it still made plans to deliver the mail, collect taxes, and for Congress to continue whatever business it would conduct after the nation had been destroyed. Much of those plans are still in place. You have to wonder how all this is going to work after an all-out nuclear war.

We have heard time after time that the sole purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is to deter aggression by another nation, and that this doctrine has worked (as there has not been a nuclear war for the past 78 years). Of course they don't talk about the numerous close calls that could have resulted in a nuclear war between the U.S. and Soviet Union/Russia.

Of course, for deterrence to be remotely credible, the U.S. must have the intention to use nuclear weapons, and so long as they exist there is some probability that they will be used one day; it is not about if, but when. As the U.S. Nuclear Declatory Policy states , “As long as nuclear weapons exist, the fundamental role of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attack on the United States, our allies, and partners. The U.S. would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.” The critical question here is, Just what would be considered an “extreme circumstance?”

And finally, as have seen over and over, and now with blazing clarity with Russia's war on Ukraine, deterrence simply does not work. And yet, the U.S. continues to extoll the utility of nuclear weapons to protect itself. It is sheer madness. And now here we are, 78 years since the first atomic device was tested, and we are edging dangerously close once again to a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia. Such an event would be the end of human civilization, and the survivors would envy the dead.

How do we stop this madness? As a beginning, we can attend one of the upcoming events around the country commemorating the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We must remember our history in order to avoid reenacting its most horrific moments, which, ironically, would pale in comparison to a nuclear war, which would be the shortest war in human history, ending in no more than a few short hours.

But we must not stop there. We must get involved with one or more of the organizations – local, regional, national, international – working to abolish nuclear weapons. Above all, we must educate ourselves and then share our knowledge with others so that they can take action.

At 78 years it is high time we put the nuclear genie back in the lamp before it is too late. But first we need to determine what our final wish will be. Let us hope we, as a species, make the right choice. Our survival depends on it.

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Published at Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action on July 17, 2023: https://www.gzcenter.org/after-78-years-can-we-put-the-nuclear-genie-back-in-the-lamp/

The debate you won't hear in the U.S. Congress

On February 20, 2018 Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer presented a "Question for Short Debate" in the House of Lords, Parliament of the United Kingdom: "To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the outcome of the United Nations Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, Leading to Their Total Elimination."

The July 7, 2017 joint statement by France, the United Kingdom and the United States clearly stated that they "do not intend to sign, ratify or ever become party to" the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that was passed by a majority of nations that same day. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, or the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty, is the first legally binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons, with the goal of leading towards their total elimination.

It is unconscionable that any nation claiming to uphold the rule of international law and the United Nations Charter would refuse to support one of the most important treaties in modern history.

The only attempts at something resembling debate (about nuclear weapons) in the U.S. Congress have been recent concerns about the President's authority to order the launch of nuclear weapons, and the recently released Nuclear Posture Review will hopefully generate some useful debate. However, members of Congress are mostly mute about the U.S. signing the Ban Treaty.

Click here to read all the contributions to the debate surrounding Lord Domer's question.

Here is Lord Domer's opening contribution to debate on her question:

My Lords, I declare an interest as a co-president of Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament. I thank all noble Lords who will contribute their considerable expertise this evening. Many noble Lords taking part in this debate will have spoken in the debate in 2013 that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, introduced, which was really the last substantial debate that we had on the issue generally.

What has changed since 2013? Certainly not my views. I still see nuclear weapons as an immense danger to the future of the planet. But the nuclear landscape has changed significantly, and there is a growing consensus that luck is running out—because we have been lucky that there has been no catastrophic accident, and no accidental launch. In the words of former US energy secretary Ernest Moniz, who is now the CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, the,

“margin for error in avoiding disaster is getting thinner because of the introduction of new, smaller weapons, the broadening of circumstances in which their use is being contemplated, and a lack of high-level communications between major nuclear weapons powers”.

He said that the chance of nuclear use was,

“higher than it’s been since the Cuban missile crisis”.

His words are, rightly, chilling.

That increased threat was one of the factors that led to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which is about to become international law. It was voted for by 122 countries, with one against, and some abstentions—of course, all nuclear weapon states abstained. The treaty, widely known as the ban treaty, will become international law when 50 states have signed and ratified it. The ban treaty prohibits states parties from developing, testing, producing manufacturing, otherwise acquiring, possessing, stockpiling, transferring, using or threatening to use nuclear weapons, so it is pretty comprehensive. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, known as ICAN, won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for its work on the ban treaty.

The treaty results from the frustration of the vast majority of countries of the world with the few nuclear weapon states, which have completely failed to honour Article 6 of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Noble Lords will know that Article 6 requires that nuclear weapons states make meaningful steps towards nuclear disarmament. In return, other countries agreed not to develop nuclear weapons. It is 50 years since that agreement was signed and, although there have been steps to limit the number of nuclear weapons, there has not been the disarmament envisaged by Article 6.

In this very House, 50 years ago, Lord Chalfont, the then Minister, said that,

“we regard the Non-Proliferation Treaty as an essential first step in achieving the ending of the nuclear arms race and making progress towards general and complete disarmament”.—[Official Report, 18/6/1968; col. 514.]

So, 50 years on, my first question to the Minister is whether multilateral nuclear disarmament is still a UK Government aspiration. It seems to me that our Governments always say that it is an aspiration, but then always say that “now is not the time”.​
An example of this would be when the UN convened the open-ended working group to try and kick-start the process, stuck ever since 1996, of the UN Conference on Disarmament. The UK boycotted that opportunity—but why? I asked that question in March 2016, and this is the reply:

“The UK is not attending the Open Ended Working Group … on nuclear disarmament in Geneva …The Government believes that productive results can only be ensured through a consensus-based approach that takes into account the wider global security environment”.

But how can consensus ever be reached when those with nuclear weapons will not even attend meetings to debate the issues?

The UK boycotted the first two international conferences on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear war. Why? Does closing our eyes to the reality of a nuclear war really change those realities? Of course it does not. The president of the International Red Cross said at the conclusion of those conferences that,

“if a nuclear conflict happened today, there is no humanitarian assistance capacity that could adequately respond to such a catastrophe”.

Of course, beside the appalling immediate deaths, the world would face the much wider threat of a prolonged nuclear winter.

Nuclear weapons are now the only weapons of mass destruction that are not subject to a categorical ban. Chemical and biological weapons are rightly banned, but nuclear weapons, the most apocalyptic WMDs, remain legally acceptable. Now the ban treaty fills a major gap in international law and will change that.

The treaty was adopted, in July last year, before the increased dangers posed by President Trump’s new nuclear posture, which Senator Ed Markey says,

“isn’t deterrence—it’s an invitation for America’s adversaries to expand and diversify their nuclear arsenals too”.

The accuracy of his quote is echoed in the Chinese PLA Daily, which responded to the new American posture by saying that China needs more nuclear warheads to deter the US threat. Just this month the news is bad. Russia is reported to be deploying nuclear weapons on the borders of Poland and Lithuania. The US Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, said that Pakistan is developing new types of nuclear weapons, including short-range tactical ones, which will bring more risks to the region. All of this has led atomic scientists to move the Doomsday Clock forward to two minutes to midnight. The situation is extremely urgent.

In the light of that, the UK must become a much more positive influence for progress, just as it did on climate change when we were the first country to introduce a climate change Act with mandatory targets. This example was crucial to getting the final Paris accords. I am asking the UK Government to stop boycotting global efforts to even discuss this massive issue and take an active part. I am sure that other noble Lords will mention some of the positive moves that can be built on: the Iran deal—held to be a success despite President Trump’s attempts to sabotage ​it—and the resumption of the NPT review cycle, with a preparatory committee this May hopefully leading to a reinvigorated NPT.

I ask that the UK should play a constructive part in the forthcoming UN high-level conference on nuclear disarmament. This conference could make all the difference. It could set the scene for immediate steps in changing policy, such as no first use and de-alerting, before moving the agenda on to longer-term issues of a phased programme to reduce nuclear stockpiles. Will the Minister confirm that the UK will take part in the conference, to be held in New York in May? We have plenty to offer. The UK has done some valuable work on verification; Aldermaston could be a global centre of excellence in nuclear disarmament. We also owe participation to our NATO partners. Having asked them to oppose the ban treaty process, it is now time for nuclear weapon states to provide something in return: a commitment that we are willing to engage with serious nuclear disarmament initiatives.

There is a clear choice. Although this serious subject is not really the time for a joke, this one does illustrate the stupidity of the situation we have got ourselves into. There are two aliens, and the first one says, “The dominant life forms on planet Earth have developed satellite-based nuclear weapons”. The second alien asks, “Are they an emerging intelligence”? The first alien says, “I don’t think so; they have them aimed at themselves”. We have the nuclear weapons aimed at ourselves as mankind. It is time that we made a choice to start on the road to disarmament. It will be a long and difficult road, but we have to start talking. We have to attend the UN high-level conference in New York and I hope that the Minister will have a positive message about that for this House this evening.